Fridae

Lee Kang-sheng is the lover, muse and protege of the gay Taiwanese arthouse director Tsai Ming-liang. He has starred in nearly every film made by Ming-liang, but of late he has ventured into making films himself.

The Missing, his promising directorial debut of 2003, was a quiet drama about a woman looking for her grandson. It excited critics and audiences, and won numerous awards. His latest film, however, is an entirely different kettle of fish. Help Me, Eros is an arty meditation on sex and desire, which has drawn very mixed reactions from viewers.

Its plot about a broke stocks trader (played by Kang-sheng himself) wandering the city in search of cheap sex to distract himself. In some ways, the film echoes the themes and plot of Vive L'Amour (1994), Ming-liang's extraordinary treatise on urban alienation. Help Me, Eros occasional forays into abstract images are also reminiscent of Ming-liang's later films like The Hole and The Wayward Cloud.

Unfortunately, whereas Ming-liang's films always visually and thematically integrated, Kang-sheng's new film is not entirely coherent. There are some brilliant visual flourishes, but some forced or fake ones too. Television host Dennis Nieh, playing a gay cook married to a woman, offers some black humour.

Help Me, Eros is a somewhat bewildering picture that only hints at borrowed genius.